A Flock of Girls and Boys Part 20

"Oh, I've done that. I helped in a fair last summer, and we gave the money to the children's hospital. But Miss Vincent said last week that all of us could find ways of doing good every day if we would keep our eyes and ears and hearts open; and I've felt ever since that she was keeping her eyes open on the watch for something she expected _me_ to do."

"Nonsense! She knows as well as we do that we haven't time to do any more now. She means when we grow older. But look at the clock,--five minutes to supper-time, and I've got to 'do' my hair all over, the braid is so frowzely."

"What makes you braid it? Why don't you let it hang in a curl, as you used to?"

"I told you why yesterday,--because that Burr girl has made me sick of curls, with that great black flop of hers stringing down her back. She'd make me sick of anything. I haven't worn my red blouse since she came out with that fiery thing of hers. _Isn't_ it horrid?"

"Yes, horrid!"

A few minutes after, as Eva and Alice were stirring their cocoa at the supper-table, the girl they had been criticising came hastily into the dining-room and took her place. She was a tall girl for her age, with a heavy ungainly figure, a swarthy skin, and black hair which was tied back in a long curl. She wore a dark plaid skirt, with a blouse of fiery red cashmere, and a hair ribbon of a deep violet shade. Nothing could have been more ill-matched or more unbecoming. The girl who sat beside her, pretty Janey Miller, was a great contrast, with her blond curls, her rosy cheeks, and simple well-fitting dress of blue serge. Her every movement, too, was as full of grace as Cordelia Burr's was exactly the reverse. Everything seemed to go well with Janey; everything seemed to go ill with Cordelia. She spilled her cocoa, she dropped her knife, she crumbled her gingerbread, and she clattered her cup and saucer.

Certainly she was not a very pleasant person to sit near. But Janey tried to conceal her annoyance, and succeeded very well, until at the end of the meal Cordelia, in her headlong haste in leaving her seat, tipped over a gla.s.s of water upon her neighbor's pretty blue dress. This was too much, for Janey, and it was little wonder that she jumped up with an impatient exclamation, nor that she declared to Eva and Alice a little later that Cordelia ought to be ashamed of herself for being so careless, and that she did wish she didn't have to sit next to her.

"I suppose, though, I shall have to sit there until the end of this term; but there's _one_ thing I'm not going to do any more,--I'm not going to dance with her. She doesn't keep step, and she _does_ dress so!" concluded Janey.

"Yes, she does dress dreadfully; and to think it's her own fault. She chooses her things herself," said Eva.

"No!" exclaimed Janey.

"Yes, she does; her mother is 'way off somewhere, and Cordelia gets what she likes."

"And she doesn't know any better than to like such horrid things!

Sometimes she looks as if she'd lived with wild Indians!"

"That's it; that's it, I forgot!" shouted Eva. "She _has_ lived 'way off out in a Territory on an Indian reservation. Her father is an army officer of some kind."

"Young ladies, young ladies, look at your clocks!" suddenly called a voice outside the door.

"Why, goodness, it's bedtime!" whispered Janey. "Good-night, good-night."

The next afternoon, when the Sunday cla.s.ses were in session in the great hall, Janey, who was not in the same cla.s.s with Eva and Alice, wondered as she looked across at them what they could be talking about that seemed so interesting. This is what they were talking about: Alice, in her clever exact way, had told Miss Vincent the whole of that little Sat.u.r.day-night talk concerning the good Samaritan. Miss Vincent smiled when Alice told of Eva's odd simplicity of application; but as Alice went on and presented Eva's perplexity and her plea for girls of her age,--their lack of time and all that, and her own a.s.surance to Eva that Miss Vincent did not mean what Eva fancied that she did,--Miss Vincent, in a quick, decided, almost eager way, started forward and cried,--

"Oh, but I did! I did mean it. Girls of your age can do--oh, so much!

You are thinking of only one way of doing,--helping the poor, visiting people in need. I _don't_ think you can do much of that. I think that _is_ mostly for older people; but you live in a little world of your own,--a girls' world, where you can help or hurt one another every day and hour by what you do or say. Oh, I know, I know, for I went through such suffering once,--was so hurt when I might have been helped. But let me tell you about it, and then you'll see what I mean. It was when I was between twelve and thirteen. We had just come to Boston, and I was sent to a strange school. I was very shy, but ashamed to show that I was. So when the girls stared at me, as girls will, and giggled amongst themselves about anything, I thought they were staring in an unfriendly way and laughing at _me_, and I immediately straightened up and put on a stiff and what I tried to make an indifferent manner. This only prejudiced them against me, and the unfriendliness I had fancied became very soon a reality, and I was snubbed or avoided in the most decided way. I tried to bear this silently, to act as if I didn't care for a while, but I became so lonely at length I thought I would try to conciliate them. I dare say, however, my shy manner was still misunderstood, for I was not encouraged to go on. What I suffered at this time I have never forgotten. The girls were no worse than other girls, but they had started out on a wrong track, and gradually the whole flock of them, one led on by what another would say or do, were down upon me. It was a sort of contagious excitement, and they didn't stop to think it might be unjust or cruel. Things went on from bad to worse, until at last I gave up trying to conciliate, and turned on them like a little wild-cat. I forgot my timidity,--forgot everything but my desire to be even with them, as I expressed it. But it wasn't an even conflict,--thirty girls against one; and at length I did something dreadful. I was going from the school-room to a recitation room with my ink-bottle; that I had been to have filled, when I met in the hall three of 'my enemies,' as I called them. In trying to avoid them I ran against them. They thought I did it purposely, and at once accused me of that, and other sins I happened to be innocent of, in a way that exasperated me. I tried to go on, but they barred my progress; and then it was that I lost all control of myself, and in a sort of frantic fury flung the ink-bottle that I held straight before me. I could never recall the details of anything after that. I only remember the screams, the opening of doors, the teachers hastening up, a voice saying, 'No; only the dresses are injured; but she might have killed somebody!' In the answers to their questions the teachers got at something of the truth, not all of it. They were very much shocked at a state of things they had not even suspected; but my violence prejudiced them against me, as was natural, and they had little sympathy for me. Of course I couldn't remain at the school after that. I was not expelled. My father took me away, yet I always felt that I went in disgrace."

"They were horrid girls,--horrid!" cried Alice, vehemently.

"No; they were like any ordinary girls who _don't think_. But you see how different everything might have been if only _one_ of them had thought to say a kind word to me; had seen that I might have been suffering, and"--smiling down upon Eva--"been a good Samaritan to me."

"They were horrid, or they _would_ have thought," insisted Alice. "I'm sure _I_ don't know any girls who would have been so stupid."

"Nor I, nor I," chimed in two or three other voices. But Eva Nelson was silent.

CHAPTER II.

"You are the most ridiculous girl for getting fancies into your head, Eva; and you never get things right,--never!"

"I think you are very unkind."

"Well, you can think so. _I_ think--"

"Hus.h.!.+" in a warning voice; "there's some one knocking at the door;"

then, louder, "Come in;" and responsive to this invitation, Janey Miller entered.

"What were you and Eva squabbling about?" she asked, looking at Alice.

"Cordelia Burr!" replied Alice, disdainfully.

"Cordelia Burr?"

"Yes. What do you think? Eva wants to take her up and be intimate with her."

"Now, Alice, I don't," cried Eva. "I only wanted to be kinder to her.

When Miss Vincent told us that story yesterday, I couldn't help thinking of Cordelia, and that we might be on the wrong track with _her_, as those horrid girls were with Miss Vincent."

"'Those horrid girls'! What does she mean, Alice?" asked Janey.

Alice repeated Miss Vincent's story. "And Eva," she went on, "has got it into her head that Cordelia is like what Miss Vincent was, and that we are like those horrid girls."

"Not like them; not as bad as they were, _yet_; but we might be if we kept on, maybe."

"But it isn't the same thing at all, Eva," struck in Janey. "That sweet, pretty Miss Vincent could never have been anything like Cordelia; and we--I'm sure none of us have been like those horrid girls. I don't like Cordelia, but I don't say anything hateful to her, and none of us girls do."

"But you--we don't want her 'round with us, and we show it. We won't dance with her if we can help it, and we've managed to keep her out of things that we were in, a good many times."

"Well, n.o.body wants a person 'round with them who makes herself so disagreeable as Cordelia does; and as for dancing with her, she's never in step, and is always treading upon you and b.u.mping against you; and in everything else it's just the same."

"Maybe she's shy, as Miss Vincent was."

"Shy! Cordelia Burr shy!" shouted Alice, in derision.

"No; she's anything but shy," said Janey; "she's as uppish and independent as she can be."

"But maybe she puts that on. Maybe--"

"Maybe she's a princess in disguise!" cried Alice, scornfully.

"Well, I don't care. I think we ought to try and see if perhaps we are not on the wrong track with her; and I--"

"Now, Eva," and Alice looked up very determinedly, "if you begin to take notice of Cordelia, there'll be no getting away from her; she'll be pus.h.i.+ng herself in where she isn't wanted, constantly. And there's just one thing more: I'll say, if you _do_ begin this, you'll have to do it alone. I won't have anything to do with it; and, you'll see, the rest of the girls won't; and you'll be left to yourself with Miss Cordelia, and a nice time you'll have of it."

Eva made no answer. Indeed, she would have found it hard to speak, for she was choking with tears,--tears that presently found vent in "a good cry," as Alice and Janey left the room.

What should she do? What _could_ she do with all the girls against her?

If she could only tell Miss Vincent, she could advise her. But Miss Vincent had been summoned home by illness that very morning.